Washington CeaseFire

• Incident Date: June 1, 2009
• Fatalities: 0
• Injuries: 1
• Address: Roosevelt and North Sixth avenues
• City: Yakima
• State: Washington
• Zip Code: 98902

Melissa Snchez. Yakima Herald - Republic. Yakima, Wash.: Jun 4, 2009. pg. A.1

(Copyright (c) 2009 Yakima Herald-Republic)

The 13-year-old girl shot in the abdomen Monday night when a bullet tore through a wall of her Yakima apartment is too afraid to return home from the hospital, relatives say.

Yaneli Ramirez is out of the intensive-care unit and is now is satisfactory condition at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital. Doctors there removed a bullet after unknown assailants shot at her family's Roosevelt Avenue apartment.

So far Yakima police -- who do not believe the family has any drug or gang connections -- have made no arrests.

"Everything happened so fast," said her father, Gonzalo Ramirez, his eyes moistening as he recalled seeing his only daughter -- an eighth-grader at Franklin Middle School -- covered in blood on the living room floor.

Like police, he says he's confused by what took place Monday night at the apartment where his family has lived for nearly a decade, one house from where Roosevelt and North Sixth avenues meet.

"I don't understand why these guys would come here," he said when he briefly left the hospital early Wednesday afternoon. "If they came to rob us, why they hurt us? We've never had any problems with anyone here."

He says he was sitting in his parked car in the dark alley outside his four-unit apartment building, talking on his cell phone. Suddenly, he says, four or five teenagers ran into the alley.

It's common to see teenagers dressed in blue or red gang colors cut through the alley, says neighbor Shelley Briggs. A few months ago, somebody sprayed red gang tagging on the front of the apartment building.

When the teens headed for his porch, Gonzalo Ramirez opened the door of his Oldsmobile Intrigue and asked, in Spanish, who they were looking for. His wife and three children were inside.

The attackers, who wore black and red, responded by bashing him in the head with a gun. They left him in the alley and returned to bang and kick on the locked apartment door.

Inside, his wife and his slender 15-year-old son, Rudy Ramirez, pushed against the door to keep it closed. His brother was sitting at a computer desk in the corner; his sister, Yaneli, was finishing her homework in a room down the hall.

But the attackers kicked the door so hard it began to break out of the jamb.

Then, two of the attackers ran around the building and started shooting, Rudy Ramirez said. When one bullet narrowly missed his brother, Rudy yelled for his mom and brother to get on the floor.

That's when his sister walked out of the hallway -- and into the path of another bullet. He heard her cry out.

After that, the attackers ran off, Rudy Ramirez said.

"My little girl, she was trying to find out what was happening," Gonzalo Ramirez said. "She doesn't want to come back here now. None of the kids do."

He and his brother-in-law, who lives with his wife and 2-month-old son in the unit next door, are now looking for a new place to live -- in a "safer" neighborhood.

"Everybody is traumatized," said his brother-in-law, Francisco Guevara. "This isn't something you can forget about, and say, 'OK, nothing happened. We can resume things like normal.'"

The neighborhood has changed plenty in the past few decades, said Briggs, who's lived in the same house for 33 years. She blames gangs for the crime.

"I don't know what territory is controlled by which gangs, and I don't know whose territory we're living in," she said. "But this is ridiculous. I've been watching that little girl grow up and she's as sweet as can be."

• Incident Type: Assault (or Homicide)
• Attributes: Central Washington, Gang Violence